-The Indian Express Decades of mismanagement have hobbled India’s mental health programme An event commemorating World Mental Health week opened at the WHO in Geneva this week. At a key session, the Disease Control Priorities project released its recommendations to governments to address the burden of mental disorders. This was timely for India, for few countries have witnessed so many high-profile debates related to mental health while ignoring the centrality of mental health...

-Economic and Political Weekly While insufficient sanitation facilities often get represented in statistics and are reported in the literature on urban infrastructure planning and contested urban spaces, what is often left out is the everyday practice and experience of going to dysfunctional toilets, particularly by women. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate the issue in the everyday lives...

-Outlook Vikram Patel is professor of international mental health and founding director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He’s been feat­ured in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people worldwide. He spoke to Priyadarshini Sen on the dark side of mental institutions. Excerpts: * What are your thoughts on labelling a person ‘mad’ and committing him/her to a psychiatric care facility? Well, being admitted...

-Business Standard The World Bank's latest report "Mind, Society and Behaviour" calls for re-designing development policy based on a more realistic understanding of how human beings think and behave. The lead author of the report, Varun Gauri, was in New Delhi and spoke to Anjuli Bhargava on the thinking behind the report and what India can do with it. Edited excerpts: * Right from the cover design to the title, this report...

-The Hindu Chennai: Depression is reported to be one of the significant health problems facing the employees of India Inc, says a report of Assocham. Demanding schedules, high stress levels and performance-linked perquisites are having a toll on the health of corporate India's employees. Obesity is the second life style disease they are facing. High blood pressure and diabetes are the third and fourth major diseases, respectively. "Nearly 42.5 per cent of employees...